tea and classes--with "Only at Mac" and Hamlet included!

So first off…it’s suddenly incredibly cold here. Walking back from the library this evening (admittedly at 10:00, but still), it felt the way it feels when you walk back to your hotel in the Grand Canyon winter at night, with the hard-packed snow around you and the smell of ice in the air.

Let me translate: early fall in Minnesota feels like the dead of winter in Flagstaff. What?! 

I’m completely doomed.

Since it’s been crazy cold all of the time lately (and I have a cold, ergo a sore throat), I’ve been drinking gallons of tea. This has the dual effect of making my tea supplies begin to run low ALREADY and making me notice various things. First of all, my thermos is incredibly good at its job. It can hold the heat in so well that my tea will still steam two hours after I seal it into my thermos. Unfortunately, this means that if I make tea and wait two hours to drink it, it will still steam up my glasses as I try to take a sip. *sigh* I’m beginning to understand why everyone hates glasses in cold weather so much! The second (and more exciting) thing comes partly because the inside of my thermos is a gorgeous shiny silver, which means that it holds and reflects light in a really interesting way. This means that I can see the colors of my teas better than almost anywhere else (except a glass teapot with a candle underneath, which I don’t currently have access to), especially in the dim lighting of my art history class. So sometimes I beguile away a couple of minutes staring into the depths of my glowing red Earl Grey (did you know that Earl Grey is incredibly red when brewed?? Neither did I! But it’s gorgeous!) while my teacher talks about ziggurats, or my golden mint tea while she discusses the death pits at Ur. It’s very therapeutic, although perhaps unnecessarily soporific (I could have sworn that word had a “ph” somewhere…).

College is generally turning out to be pretty awesome overall. It’s unfortunate, to be sure, that our cafeteria is under the impression that overwhelming sweetness = flavorful deliciousness and I do wish that I could occasionally find a spoon. (Also the cafeteria has this bewildering policy of heating the plates so much that they burn your fingers if you hold them too long AND THEN HIDING ALL OF THE TRAYS.) But I love that people have a much more distinguishing sense of style here, and that everyone (although there are conformists among us, of course) isn’t cut out of the same, high-school patterned cloth. We’re all nerds here, and proud of it!!

It also turns out that dorm life is surprisingly…okay (except when I accidentally lock my roommate out of our room). People (at least on my floor) are quiet and courteous, we try to leave our doors open when we’re not doing something interruptable, and we always smile at each other in the hallways and hold open doors. And, although I was initially disappointed not to be on the fifth floor (because I like to be many stories up), it turns out that my calf muscles are completely satisfied with this choice. I tell myself that I can only take the stairs, unless the elevator is ready to leave when I am AND I’m in a hurry or if I have many heavy things. I am going to be SO fit by the end of the year! Also, Mom—I have not yet fallen down (or up) the stairs, and I have gone up more flights of stairs this week than in the entire last year (Although I did roller-coaster-slide off one step onto the next today. It was very exciting.). 

Today I entered the hitherto (a word which I just tried to re-invent as hithertofore) unexplored excitement of the second floor of the library (I’d only been on one and four before), and discovered THE CHILDREN’S SECTION!! I haven’t really had time to explore it yet, but I plan to very soon, and I’m so glad that it exists at all! I shall include pictures when I eventually get around to taking them, not only of this newly discovered room, but of the whole campus.

And now, for the latest episode of Only at Mac:

1. Only at Mac…is the lawn discolored in patches because so many people spend time outdoors studying on it (leaving human- and blanket-shaped pale patches). I am concerned that this is an omen of what is to come—we shall never be able to leave our dorms once winter hits.

2. Only at Mac…is the fourth floor of the only building with single-sex floors (boys on one and two, girls on three through five) nicknamed “The Virgin Isles.” (At times this is an extremely strange place.)

3. Only at Mac…are you assigned a librarian to help you out with research who is based in your field of interest (determined by your first year course). This librarian can be switched once you declare a major (so they’ll even help you with senior thesis stuff!!). And they’re all super nice! Mine is named Ginny, which must be a good sign.

4. Only at Mac…is it rumored that our tuitions actually go to appease The Squirrel King, a terrifyingly dictatorial black squirrel who is distinguished by his red tail and his taste for expensive, high-end nuts. FEAR HIM.

My classes are all going extremely well, especially the French classes. It turns out that, instead of being the very worst, as I had feared, I’m one of the best, and doing extremely well with the speaking! It’s all very exciting. It’s definitely the weirdest French class I’ve ever been in, though; we spend most of class discussing articles that we’ve read and responded to as homework. And for French lab, where we’re supposed to be doing all of the talking, we have to prepare a four-line poem without the letter “e”. I’m pretty sure that this is impossible for one with as small of a vocabulary as I have. 

Chemistry is good, because I love my teacher already, but most of the information we’ve been covering so far has been review. Which is okay for the moment (remember, Lily, it’s just the first week!), but I do hope it gets all new and exciting soon. Today, though she told us the most amazing story: She was telling us about the incredible tininess of atoms, and why it therefore made sense for us to use moles to talk about them. As part of this description, she mentioned that, if you rub your hand across a surface, you pick up thousands of molecules of whatever the surface is made of. Then she paused and said, “I told that to my seven year-old son, and now he likes to rub my wedding ring, because he says he’s picking up thousands of molecules of gold.” Awww!

My theater class is good too, although my professor might be a little bit crazy. At the beginning of class we have to do “warm-ups,” which include jogging around the (extremely small and therefore slightly dizzying at high speeds) classroom and shouting Shakespearean insults into the air. Also, we don’t seem to have any plan in class, just discussion of the plays that we’ve seen and/or are reading. Which is fascinating and stimulating, but also a tad confusing for a class lay-out. I’m really enjoying it, though, because the people in that class really care, and often have interesting things to say. All-in-all, it’s a lot of fun. And who can resist a class that takes you to shows??

Two more random things before I go: Firstly, today I ate turnips for the first time ever (at least in any recognizable form). Mom and Dad: They’re delicious (even as steam-table cafeteria food)! Why didn’t we eat them when I was a kid?? Clara: TURNIPS!! I ate them and thought of you. Also I thought of you because you should try them—they’re surprisingly reminiscent of Brussels’ sprouts. Secondly, it turns out that the whole “Minnesooohhhta” accent thing is….COMPLETELY TRUE. I don’t actually here it that much in the word “Minnesota,” but I can definitely hear the slowing down of the “o” in other words with similar sounds. It’s so amusing!

I’ve gots to pasta now (as my dear friend Leslie would say) and get some much-needed sleep! More posts soon (we hope).

And now…for those interested parties…my review of Hamlet. I’m putting this at the end because I know that some of you won’t be interested, and I’m writing it today because (despite the fact that I’m sick and also fatigued and so this won’t be the best that it could be), if I don’t write it soon, it will never be the best that it could be. So here goes!

First, let me start out by saying that this was a modern representation of Hamlet, and I’m never entirely sure how I feel about that.

Getting into it, though, I felt like they both did a good job with the modernization and changed too much. The things they did right mostly had to do with the feel of the play, and may be the difference between decisions made by the actors and by the director. I was incredibly interested by the way that the characters moved with modern gestures—things that I probably wouldn’t have noticed, except that they were in a performance of Hamlet.  I had never before realized that there was such a huge difference between the traditional movements of the theater and the movements of twenty-first century behavior. It was fascinating to watch, if oddly placed. The delivery was also impressively modern (the pauses and tones were less Shakespearean and much more like a modern performer), which was both interesting to watch as a mirror held up to ourselves (and as a demonstration of the skill of the actors) and also slightly disturbing as part of a play-gone-wrong. I really felt like the emphases were too modern and alien to fit within the context of Hamlet. 

The sets were also interesting, mostly for their problems. I wasn’t a big fan of most of the sets—they were overly pushy about their message (the artistic director has a problem with government) and strangely off-putting—the opening scene with the guards was set is a museum-style surveillance room. My two favorite sets (also one single set element), though, were interesting because they seemed to me to bring the two clashing pieces of the performance (Shakespeare’s archaic, compelling language and the bizarre modern costumes and actions) together a little. These sets seemed to me to be incredibly referential, both of what Shakespeare probably intended and of previous major productions of Hamlet. The chapel scene, for instance, seemed to me to be designed as a medieval chapel, while still retaining its hospital- or hotel-lobby plainness that made it fit with the modern design of the play (I’m not going to go into more depth on this here because I just wrote a paper about it and am a little frustrated with the whole subject. If you’re interested in reading more of what I thought about the chapel scene, you probably already have a copy of my essay, but if you do not and wish to read it, just e-mail me and I’ll send it to you.). This was also true, for me, in the scene where Hamlet talks to the ghost of his father, which was set (in this silly rendition) in “The Far Reaches of the Sub-Sub Basement of the Guard Tower,” but used carefully placed columns, a fog machine, and a green spotlight for the ghost to bring to mind the more traditional forest setting. The set element that also seemed pleasantly referential was a huge panel of windows that were brought in, but which acted as a wall of mirrors when the lights were right. Perhaps I’m getting overly excited to see a reference from this to the famous Kenneth Branagh film (and mirror scene), but then again, maybe not.

Beyond the sets, though, three things really bothered me about the production:

Firstly, the production seemed to play itself way too much for laughs. The scene with the ghost, for example, included the ghost repeatedly pressing the elevator button (as Hamlet decides whether to go with him or not) as the doors open, time-out, and close. It was pure silliness, and felt out-of-place in the show. Ophelia’s madness scene, too, was played with an eye for laughs—something I thought graduation from high school would rescue me from. That scene is TRAGIC!! IT IS A KEY SCENE IN THE WHOLE SERIES OF TRAGEDIES THAT OCCUR IN THE PLAY!! And I’m not going to get into that right now!

The Ophelia thing also brings up my second problem, which was that Hamlet was portrayed as a shallow, sarcastic teenager, and this messed with the storyline in an incredibly important way. It made it seem that Hamlet was pursing this revenge because of his anger at and hatred of his uncle, not because of his deep and abiding love of his father. Additionally, they completely removed any semblance of actual feelings between Ophelia and Hamlet, so the “Get thee to a nunnery!” scene was barely interesting, and negligently moving. 

Worst of all, though, was the use of technology all through the performance. Hamlet texted not infrequently, Horatio recorded the play-within-a-play on a camcorder (which also messes with the story, because the fleeting triumph and certainty of that moment has to be fleeting), Polonius relayed his messages to Reynaldo over Skype, the pictures Hamlet shows to his mother to teach her the error of her ways are shown on a cell phone, and much of the action in the opening scenes takes place on a large surveillance screen. What bothered me about this was not only that it was unsubtle and boring, but also that it seemed to be trying to turn the world of the play into a movie. Much of the action happened either off-stage or in pre-recorded sessions (I couldn’t tell which, which bothered me, although some of the photographs were certainly pre-shot), neither of which is the way a play is supposed to work. It screws with the point of live performance and simultaneously seems like cheating—that’s not how you work within the confines of a venue! 

Additionally, the focus of these many screens was too much on faces, just as it would be in a movie, which is a different kind of acting and experience than you find (or are SUPPOSED to find) in live theater.

Ohoh, and the “backdrop” to the play-within-a-play was (and this seriously pissed me off) footage of 9-11 and various wars. INTERROBANG! 

Oh, and also there were bunch of other things that made me angry and/or frustrated and/or bothered, but I can’t go into them now or I’ll be here all night.

I want to leave you with something that I enjoyed about the show, so that you don’t think that I hated it! The best thing about the show, probably, was the relationship between Horatio and Hamlet, which was played with a depth and subtlety that I haven’t seen before (of course, I haven’t ever seen a live production before, but still…). Hamlet and Horatio were close like brothers, and it was through his interactions with Horatio that we could see Hamlet’s vulnerability and pain. The two were extremely good together, and by far the most poignant moment of the play, for me, was watching Horatio watch Hamlet die.

Looking this over, it seems pretty clear to me that, although I greatly enjoyed the show, I didn’t like the production. In other words, this does not at all seem to me to be the way to create Hamlet, but I’m really glad that I got to go and get mad and interested.

I’m attaching here (carefully at the end!) a link to the so-called “trailer” for the performance. I must say that I think that the trailer emphasizes the things that I did not like about the play (which of course makes me wonder if I missed things that I would have hated, because if this is what they want to present to the world as representing their show…?). That said, though, you can watch it if you want to and not if you don’t. http://www.jungletheater.com/season2011/hamlet.html

Toodles!